


Pawnee College

by neatomosquito



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Gen, High School, History References, I do what I like!, I hope you like the cliches, Leslie wants to be School Captain
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-26 07:12:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13852692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neatomosquito/pseuds/neatomosquito
Summary: Leslie has a mission for her senior year: earn School Captaincy, graduate, become an Ivy Leaguer, earn top marks in AP History and get set on her dreams for American Presidency.Ben's the new kid at school, determined to prove himself a responsible teenager.The might just be able to help each other out.





	1. PART I: Mondays, am I right?

**Author's Note:**

> Hola,
> 
> This is the first chapter of who knows!! How many!!! In a super cliche high school AU that I really wanted to read so I decided to write it after rewatching every season instead of doing uni work.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leslie has a bright new idea, Ben wanders onto the set of a political thriller, Historical Rivals Do Not Good Friends Make

“Ann, you beautiful, mythical, deaf bat,” Leslie sighs, cracking open her Tupperware. “I _said_ —”

“No, no,” Ann stops her, waving her fork in a preventative _z_ over her pasta salad. Leslie thinks Ann sometimes becomes weirdly intense when she eats pasta salad because it makes her feel like a businesswoman from a Rom-com in the 70s. It’s a theory developed over many-a pasta salad revelations. “I heard what you said, I said _what_ as in like, what do you mean? Are you serious? Are you _crazy_?”

“This is my _dream_ ,” Leslie moans, swaying back in her seat, plucking her waffle out of the plastic and into her hands. “Don’t you dare tell me I can’t follow my dream!”

“I thought your dream was to be the first female president,” Ann reminds her, pushing curls of pasta onto her fork.

“No, I changed that—”

“After Hillary was nominated yeah I remember,” Ann sighs. “To be the _second_ female president blah blah and now—”

“Trump destroyed my dreams,” Leslie narrows her eyes. She flips her hair back. “But we’re getting off track. Ann!! Say you support me! Say it!”

“Of course I do,” Ann assures her. Leslie beams. “But Leslie, you do know that Bobby Newport is running this year.”

Leslie’s smile grows wider and wider.

Ann watches her, nearly frightened. “What are you..”

“I sure _do_.”

“Oh boy.”

“P-Annn-ela Anderson,” a voice sounds out from their right, cutting across the chatter in the cafeteria. Pawnee College’s newly remodelled multi purpose hall sings out with the chatter of 400 students in desperate need of leadership. 201 who would definitely be voting for Leslie when she wins in two months time. Or maybe less if a third candidate entered the race. Leslie frowns. Best not to get into the schematics.

The start of the new year sees the noise during the lunch time bloc set to piercing, and barely tolerable, but Leslie had only really felt the desire to move when she had heard Tom Haverford doing his best to flirt with Ann, her partner in crime, political liason and best friend in the whole world.

“Why does God allow you to happen to me, Tom?” Ann asks him, sighing as he sits next to her.

“Ann, listen,” Tom ignores her. “I’ve done a lot of thinking over the sum,” he turns to Leslie, “the sum is what I call Summer break.”

“What’s winter break?” She frowns. “Wint?” A pause, and then, “Hello, by the way.”

“X-ma,” Tom answers and then, “hey girl. Good to see you.”

Leslie smiles. “It’s nice to see you too.”

“Eczema?” Ann wrinkles her nose. “As in the—"

“Noooooo,” Tom nearly yells. “X-ma. It’s not some rank skin condition Ann! Damn you know, I bet no one else’s mind went there.”

“Mine did,” Leslie says, half shrugging.

“No one asked, Leslie,” Tom snipes.

“LESLINGHAM KNOPE,” a loud voice booms from across the hall. Leslie can see people turning to watch as Ann’s ex-boyfriend, Andy, spots her from across the tables.

“Andy’s here!” Tom announces, smiling with his mouth open.

“Is he?” Ann asks sarcastically.

“Uh, yes Ann, duh.”

Andy barrels towards them, slowly followed by April, who slinks in his shadow with a mildly amused look on her face.

“Hello Andy!” Leslie jumps up to hug him. “I didn’t see you all summer!”

“Yes that would be because my, uh, my uncle’s lake house is about a 13 hour drive from this school—”

“—Andy you know I don’t live at the schoo—”

“And also, because I dropped my phone in the lake as soon as we arrived and then tried to save it and fell in and then cause of all that totally forgot to let you guys know what I was up to—”

“Ok Andy that’s fine,” Leslie interrupts him before he can fall into a story that over-explores his mundane summer. As much as she loves Andy, and as much as she loves that she has him back in her life, she won’t make herself sit through that one. “And April! Interesting to see you showing up with Andy and everything.” Leslie beams.

April glares at her instead of smiling back, like Leslie had hoped. “How was your summer? I hope it was awful.”

“It was great!” Leslie decides to treat it like a real question. “The Pawnee goddesses and I went down to the lakes—”

“I’m sorry I asked,” April mutters.

Ron appears all of a sudden with no fanfare (as is his way), and sits down next to Leslie, pulling a brown paper bag up and onto the table.

“Ron!” Ann says. “It’s so good to see you!”

Ron barely spares her a glance, but does nod to the table. “Hello, all.”

“I’ll take it,” Ann says, nodding, mostly to herself.

Next to join them is Jerry, whom April relieves of a milk carton and a packet of doritos, and then Donna with her lunch, who sees what April stole and looks at her, dead on, shaking her head in a slow warning.

(Mark used to sit with them, and Leslie had the most massive crush on him _ever_ for ages because on time in 7th grade he took her to a movie and held her hand the whole night. It was kinda stupid and embarrassing and then he went out with Ann and it ended weirdly and then his dad got a job in London so the whole family ended up moving just after Sophomore year and Leslie still thought about him sometimes although, probably not as much as she should have).

“Hello dear friends and fellow students!” Leslie stands, knocking the bench she’s sharing with Ann, Ron, Tom and Jerry –

(All of whom glare at her as they tri to right themselves, _well, stuff em. And, anyway, it’s only a little bit of water, Ann_.)

\--and pushing her hair back over her shoulder. “I have an announcement!”

“Dear God,” Ron mutters.

“And, don’t worry, it’s a big one—”

“Have you guys heard about the new kid?” April interrupts Leslie, and Ron turns to her.

“Yes, that, speak of that for a moment.”

“I’m talking,” Leslie frowns.

“Is it especially pertinent?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Ron grumbles. “Continue, then.”

Leslie rolls her eyes. “So, now with Ron’s blessing—”

“I heard he got _expelled_ from his last school for killing his Home Tech teacher,” April smiles.

Leslie flicks the thought away with a gesture. “I’m sure that’s a lie. Now, anyway, back to my news—”

“I heard he knows someone here already,” Jerry tells them, bending forward conspiratorially. “A certain _Chris Traeger_.”

“That’s a boring fact, Jerry,” Tom frowns at him. “You interrupted Leslie’s boring announcement for something even more boring. Somehow. Jesus Christ Jerry.”

“Yeah, Jerry, would you shut up?” Leslie spares a moment to send him a glare, before turning back to the table.

“God, listen _up_!” Ann smacks her hand on the table three times, and the developing conversations around them grind to a blessed halt. “Just let her say it so we can all move on with our lives.”

“Thank you Ann, as usual, your support means beyond the world to me, I love you, you’re my best friend,” Leslie rambles at her, and Ann beams. “Now, my fellow Pawneeans—”

“Go the Raccoons! Woo!” Andy yells out, thumping his chest. Leslie spares him a slight glance, and sees April smiling up at him, dotingly.

So that hasn’t died off during the summer. Interesting.

“My fellow Pawneeans,” Leslie tries again, now, for like, the millionth time. “What I have to share with you may make some of you question your place here, in this school, and perhaps even, where you’re going after school. Like college or whatever. I know college isn’t for everyone, so, not looking at anyone—”

“ _Jerry_ ,” Tom coughs.

“Yeah I was looking at you, Jerry, sorry.”

“I have a 3.2!”

“Get to the point, Knope,” Ron pipes up, sipping moodily at his canteen grapefruit juice.

“Right, sorry,” Leslie brushes herself down. “I’m running for School Captain!”

April is the first to break the brief silence which follows. “Oh, cool.”

“And you guys are my team!”

“No,” Ron shakes his head.

“Ron,” she looks at him imploringly. “Please, Ron, please. Ron, please, _Ron_. Come on. Please. Ron.”

He clenches his jaw. “For you.”

Leslie’s smile is so large it hurts her cheeks.

The rest of the group falls into line, and she watches them in a conversation about what they could all offer.

The only thing they really have down concrete is Donna offering to drive Leslie to and from the printing store in town in her Dad’s benz, and Ann offering on-going and nonnegotiable moral support.

(Later Ron comes up to her and tells her to ask him for whatever the damn hell she needed. She kisses him on the cheek and thanks him, and tells him to put Bobby Newport in the ground. She almost regrets making the joke, because when he leaves there’s an odd look in his eye).

The bell sounds out through the cafeteria, reverberating off the walls, calling for them to head to class. Ann and Leslie head out together, farewelling the rest of their friends with a wave and a smile. They all reply the same except for April, who flips them off.

“She’s such a character,” Leslie smiles.

“Hm. Yeah.” Ann says, agreeing but with a tone that makes Leslie nearly think that she might be disagreeing. Her friend is such an enigma, sometimes. “Anyway, so, dish on the new kid.”

“I don’t know anything,” Leslie tells her, shrugging.

“Surely you do,” Ann frowns. “You know everything.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment—”

“Oh, you should.”

“—not now Ann, the damage is done.” Leslie stops at her locker, and Ann files in beside her, working at the door just two lockers down. “Anyway, Mom has been at a conference in Indianapolis and hasn’t, ya know, had her finger on the pulse as much. She only got back yesterday. And I’ve kinda been distracted by the election stuff.”

“What stuff do you have to get done now?”

“ _What stuff_?” Leslie scoffs. “Let me tell you Ann, the 40 speeches I have planned during my campaign sure ain’t gonna write themselves.” Books in hand, she slams her locker shut. “Also, I have a history paper due next period and it’s a doozy.” She frowns. “And my grandparents came to visit. It was just kind of a full weekend. Mostly the history thing though. I’m _obsessed_ with the girl I’ve written the essay on.”

“Oh yeah?” Ann feigns interest.

“I know you don’t care, but I’m going to tell you everything anyway,” Leslie rushes to Ann’s side, and the two of them head off together.

Leslie manages to get through the first 5 years of Aphra Behn’s life before Ann has to make a right to get to Chemistry, and Leslie heads off alone, pushing through the swarming students towards AP History.  

The class is only half full when Leslie pushes the door open. Her teacher, an old wizened man who always corrected her pronouns in essays from “she” to “he”, even when Leslie is writing on a female figure from history, and keeps skipping over the female role in world wars, is already sitting up the front. Leslie makes a face as she sits down. She’d been hoping for the other history teacher, a young woman who kept a jar of lollipops on her desk and wrote a PHD thesis on the mythmaking of Cleopatra (which Leslie had read twice).

Leslie takes an empty seat next to a boy she doesn’t recognise. He looks over to her as she sits down, she regards him, and sees that the due essay is perched in front of him.

“Nature in Colonial America and its Influence on the Relations Between Settlers and Native Peoples,” she reads aloud. _Shit_ , that’s kinda cool. Maybe too cool. Maybe she’s about to lose her top of the class privileges, like cleaning the chalkboard and hall passes whenever she wants em. Alarm bells start sounding in her head, and she has the irrational urge to seize the papers and throw them into the bin, or sprint down the hall to the Chemistry labs and mix them into whatever Ann is probably cooking up in a beaker. Or take it to Ron, in wood work, and get him to turn it into something else, like a duck, or a pen holder, or—

“Aphra Behn; She Who Refused To be Labelled Anonymous, A Dissertation of a Famous Figure’s Life and the Ramifications of her Influence through the…” the boy interrupts her thought, and then frowns. “Christ. How long is this title?”

“70 words. Why?” Leslie answers, maybe too quickly.

“Ever hear of saving paper?”

“Ever hear of not being an ass?” The words are out before Leslie can stop them, and yeah _maybe_ it’s an overreaction, and _maybe_ he’s kinda cute, and _maybe_ she definitely really wants to read his paper, but the history whiz thing has her thrown, and, well, she’s just like this, sort of, sometimes.

“Right,” he says quietly. “Sorry.”

“Ok class!”

And Leslie doesn’t have a chance to apologise to him until class is over, and once it is he’s up and gone before she has a chance to catch her breath.

(It was an exhilarating class on a Marxist perspective of the Roman Republic. Leslie had been enraptured).

She ends up having English Lit with him as well. She sits near him, but not next to him. The class is just introductory, and Leslie manages to tear herself away from full commitment to hearing about the week to week break up of the course so that when the bell sounds, she can step up and out, chasing after the dark brown hair bouncing up and down ahead of her.

“Hey!” she calls after him. He doesn’t turn, and, cursing, Leslie wonders why his paper didn’t have his name on it. “ _Hey_! Brown haired boy!”

A bunch of brown haired boys turn to watch her from their lockers as she pushes past. History whiz genius doesn’t turn. Cursing, Leslie springs up to a trot, and feels sweat beginning to gather under her arms and on her neck.

 _Gross_.

She darts around Jeremy Jamm, keeping quiet and eyeing him warily, and then manages to avoid getting roped into a cloud of disinfectant scented cologne by making a tactical right at Dennis Feinstein. She brightly greets Principal Howser, who nods curtly back to her, and spares a smile for Shauna Malwae-Tweep, who’d been filling up her drink bottle at a drinking tap. By the time she reaches the boy, they’ve covered about half the school. She realises he must be headed to he Gym. She had health science, which was down near the cafeteria but, like, _blarg_. She could be late for that.

“ _Hey_!” She calls after him, as loudly as she can without yelling.

He finally seems to hear her, turning around, frowning.

He’s even cuter confused. Leslie frowns. No boys, no distractions. After Justin, it’s now Leslie time, all the time.

She isn’t going to be nominating Malala Yousafzai for a second Nobel Peace Prize by the age of 45 if she keeps getting distracted by the Justin’s of the world, no matter how cute their butts are.

“Hello sir,” she greets him.

“Oh, it’s you,” he nods, and then looks at the floor.

Leslie stands there lamely for a moment, trying to remember why she had stopped him in the first place. _Oh, yeah_. “Hey, sorry I called you an ass.”

“Did you find me an entire period after History just for that?”

“No we have Lit together,” Leslie waves her hand. “Besides. Doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.”

“Cool,” still curt, he turns, and walks away.

Leslie knows running after him and demanding to know what his problem is, is definitively a bad idea. No ifs, ands or buts. And...yeah. She's thinking about his butt again. Damn it, Leslie, get it together, girl.

“Leslie?”

She turns at the sound of her name and sees April standing behind her.

“Oh, hey April.”

April stands beside her, and together they watch as the boy turns the corner and heads off to gym.

“I called him an ass,” Leslie says, at the same time that April comments, “Man, the new kid is a lot scrawnier than I thought.”

They blink at each other.

“The new kid?” Leslie, at the same time as, “What did he do?” from April.

“He made fun of me,” Leslie says, and then tilts her head. “I think. Yes, he did.” She narrows her eyes. “He all but accused me of being _verbose_.”

“How dare he,” April deadpans. “And yeah, he’s Ben Wyatt.”

“Huh?”

“The new kid.”

“Oh, that new kid,” Leslie pretends that she had stored that piece of information in an important part of her brain. “Yeah, Ann was asking me about him.”

“Since when did Ann know how to speak?”

“ _April_.”

April smiles to herself, and Leslie sighs.

“Why aren’t you in class?”

April doesn’t miss a beat. “Why aren’t _you_ in class?”

“Good point,” Leslie acknowledges. “I got health science. Yuck.”

“I have maths,” April says. “Wanna skip?”

“Yes,” Leslie groans, and drags herself back down the hall to Health anyway.

***

The door slams open and Leslie charges through, swinging her bag up onto the breakfast bar, picking up a NutriYum bar from the pantry and marching on through to the living room.

Her mother eyes her from a couch in the corner. “You do know how to make an entrance, darling.”

“Mom! What the hell!” She has the text her mother had sent her on her phone, raised out in front of her for dramatic effect. 

Marlene Knope sighs and sets aside her book (a Political Memoir written by a Democrat senator while LBJ was Senate Majority Leader). “What is it now, Leslie?”

“Why would you make me have dinner with the Wyatts! Ben Wyatt hates me!”

“He’s only been at that school for one day and he already hates you?” Marlene frowns. “Well, forgive me for not forseeing that you would manage to make a nemesis on your first day back.”

“He’s not my nemesis,” Leslie snaps. “That’s Greg Pikitis. You know this, Mom. Keep up.”

Marlene is still cold, and Leslie can sense she’s nearing the end of her patience. “I feel that I have to apologise again, then.”

Leslie stamps her foot. “Mo _oom_.”

“Don’t whine at me,” Marlene warns her. Leslie takes in her mother’s steely blue eyes and feels her determination begin to wilt. On the bus, she and Ann had been preparing her speech. Everything from Kelly Clarkson breakout 2003 hit and the 1995 beijing Women’s Conference was brought up.

(“ _Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” “I don’t think this is what Hillary meant, Leslie.” “Hillary doesn’t know what she means.”_ )

But now, as Leslie watches her mother come to the last of her patience, she knows that there’s no fight to be had that she’ll be able to win.

“Ben and his mother moved here only a few weeks ago, they know no one in this town, and have no support network.” Marlene doesn’t break eye contact. It was a subject Ron had always commented to Leslie on, he kept telling her it was one of the five reasons he respected her mother “so damn much”.

(He kept the others a secret. Every time she asked he’d look at her suspiciously, “Why do you need to know?”)

“But why do _we_ have to be the support network,” Leslie whines. “Can’t the Perkins do it?”

“Go upstairs and get ready, they’ll be here in 45 minutes,” Marlene sits back and reopens her novel. Leslie takes the hint and turns achingly slowly to the doorway, making her way towards the white carpeted stairs.

See, Leslie _knows_ she’s being irrational, and she _knows_ Ben probably wouldn’t hate her if she could just explain that sometimes she calls people asses when they brush her up the wrong way, and she _knows_ that the Wyatt’s probably do need someone in town, someone they can ring up when they need to know where the best waffles are (JJ’s), or the best coffee (JJ’s), or the best place to go for a good conversation with some true locals (JJ’s, by far). Leslie also knows that her mother is a hound when it comes to things like this, and her motives aren’t purely altruistic, and that having Ben’s mom’s vote on the PNF board at the school every month might just mean that they’ll finally be able to upgrade the library (or get rid of it altogether and turn it into a community garden, but so far Leslie’s petitions have fallen on deaf ears). But _still_. She and Ann were going to call each other and watch Season 3 episode 10 of the West Wing tonight. Leslie had really been looking forward to it.

Stupid Ben and Stupid Mom.

She finishes her long, reluctant climb to the landing at the top of the stairs and shuffles to her room, kicking at the floor and pushing her door open as slowly as she can manage. Her room is its usual organised chaos. There are piles of old papers next to her door, next to a bookshelf overspilling with everything from a 1200 page Thomas Jefferson Biography, to a historical roman featuring Robespierre and a member of the _petite bourgeoisie_ , to a large stack of National Geographic magazines. The rest of the room is in a similar disarray. It seems messy --to the point that Ann refuses to meet Leslie at her house, and insists all sleep overs occur at the Perkins’ or not at all— but it makes sense to Leslie. Her shirt from the 2016 Women’s march is draped over her collection of antique globes, which is next to her bed, which then has mounds and mounds of binders at the foot, each of which symbolise a different future Leslie has envisioned for herself. All her clothes are out on a bare rack, because her clothes cupboard is filled with more binders, each more nostalgic than the last. The other day she’d found one from when she was five. It had been drawings of each of the people in her mothers group, with a cartoon face in the corner symbolising how much Leslie liked them

(Greg Pikitis had gotten devil horns, and an angry face drawn with red crayon. Like, that’s when you know.)

She sighs and pulls out some inoffensive-but-not-too-fancy clothes and clutches them, laying back on her bed.

Mondays.

***

Leslie is sitting with her mother messaging Ann on facebook, mere moments before Ben and his mother are due to arrive.

(Mean and Stupid Ben's mom is called Julia, apparently. Leslie wonders if she prefers Julie, or Jules. The Wyatt’s are from Minnesota, so anything goes.)

Ann wasn’t that put out when Leslie told her they’d have to push Jed Barlett and the gang back another night. Leslie sometimes gets the sneaking suspicion that Ann doesn’t like the West Wing, or at least, doesn’t like it as much as Leslie does. Something to do with her tone, and the couple of times Ann tried to broach the subject with her before she got cut off. Something. Leslie can’t put her finger on it.

She’ll bake her some cookies and buy her a coffee and ask her what’s up. That normally works with Ann. At least if Ann opts out, she’ll be able to skip to the scenes with CJ in them.

“I’ll get it,” Marlene tells her, sticking a bookmark in her memoir after a sharp rap on the front door.

“Ok,” Leslie answers unnecessarily, slightly nervous.

Marlene spares a glance back. “Be civil, Leslie.”

“I’ll be civil to your _butt_ ,” Leslie mutters when she knows her mother has moved out of earshot.

She hears voices, mostly the two mothers, and then occasionally a low answer from Ben. He laughs ( _a jerk laugh_ ) and says “something something yeah, fine something” ( _A jerk something_ ) and Leslie leaps to her feet just as they enter the living room.

“Hello,” she beams.

“Leslie, Marlene gestures for her to join them as the congregate in the middle of the room. She steps forward in next to her mother, doing her best not to look at Ben. “This is Julia—”

“Lovely to meet you,” Leslie smiles at her.

Julia smiles back. “You too!” Hm, interesting. Leslie had expected her mid-western accent to be stronger.

“And of course, you’ve met Ben,” Marlene says.

Leslie finally looks up, and sees Ben watching her with a guarded expression.

“Uh, duh!” Leslie winces at herself, and tries again. “Hey Benny.” Nope, still bad. She clears her throat. “Yep. We have History together.”

It might be a trick of the light, but she swears she sees Ben smile. “We sure do.”

Leslie frowns. What is _that_ supposed to mean. “Look—”

But her mother cuts her off. “Leslie, would you take Ben for a tour around the house? Maybe skip your room if it’s still a tip.”

Leslie nearly tells her mother when exactly she can stick a tour of the house—

(It’s up her butt.)

\--but Marlene doesn’t seem in the mood for antics, and the Wyatt’s have been too polite so far to bear witness to Leslie being too much of a teenager. So instead she just smiles and nods, and together her and Ben leave the room.

“This is the Laundry,” Leslie begins lamely, propping open the first door that she sees. She shuts it quickly when she sees that there are underwear and bras in the dirty clothes basket.

Ben just watches her.

She starts to lead him off again, but then stops, sighs and turns around. He’d been following her, and he nearly crashes into her at the sudden stop.

“Look,” she says as he rights himself. “Look, ok. I’m sorry I called you an ass. You weren’t even being an ass. I don’t know why I said it.”

Ben _does_ smile, she could have sworn it. But it’s gone as fast as it had arrived. “Ok, sure.”

“I think your paper might be better than mine,” Leslie babbles, knowing her erratic behaviour probably needed to be explained away. “And like, History is my _thing_. I do History. It’s like…like…”

“Your thing?” Ben suggests for her.

She clicks her fingers at him. “Exactly! So when you came along and were like _maybe_ better than me…”

“You’re competitive, I get it,” Ben shrugs. And then, almost shyly. “Thanks for telling me.”

Leslie blows out the mound of guilt that had been building since the history period. “Friends?”

Ben nods, and this time when he smiles, Leslie sees it perfectly, stretched out over his face like a cloud in the sky, warm and generous and definitely, definitively _there_ , in all absolute terms. “Yeah, sure.”

“Cool, cos friends let friends borrow history notes,” Leslie tells him, and the two start walking again. “And Literature notes.”

He laughs. “Sorry, I only write mine in Klingon.”

Leslie grins. “Oh my God! Nerd?”

Leslie spends the next half an hour leading him around the house, giving him a history of each of the paintings in the hall and each of the rooms they go into. By the end of it, she’s nearly having fun, and they’re sitting in the kitchen gnawing at some cookies she’d baked the night before.

“What did you say these were?” Ben asks her, barely, his mouth full of cookie.

“Chocolate and peanut butter,” Leslie watches as he brushes the crumbs off from around his mouth with his thumb. _Damn_.

“Hey,” he swallows it down, sipping at his glass of milk to clean his mouth out. “You’re going for the School Captaincy, right?”

Leslie blinks at the changing tracks. “Uh, yeah. I am. How did you know that?”

“You have seventeen political biographies within eyeshot right this second,” Ben informs her, and, yep, Leslie glances around and sees that he isn’t exaggerating.

“16,” she corrects. “One of them is a dissertation on International Realism.” She pauses. “It’s my mom’s.”

“Whatever,” Ben waves his hand. “Also, you were kinda muttering about it in History class.”

Leslie blinks. “Was I? Wait, was that out loud?”

Ben smiles again, that cute, warm smile. _Ugh_. “You were practicing a speech, I think.”

“ _Damn_ , I have got to stop accidentally saying crap out loud,” Leslie shakes her head. “One of these days it’s gonna get me into trouble.”

“Hey, I mean, from what I could hear, it was a good speech,” Ben offers. “You might need to take out some of the swear words though, if you’re planning on a school-wide audience.”

“Oh, I always write my speeches like that,” Leslie says. “Then I edit the cuss words out. Makes it so much more thrilling, don’t you think?”

“Uh, I guess?”

“Why do you ask, anyway,” Leslie picks another cookie up from the plate, breaking it apart in her fingers. “What’s up?” She smiles to herself. “What’s up, _Doc_?”

“Bugs Bunny references aside, I was just…” He frowns. “Look, did anyone ever tell you why I ended up in Pawnee?”

“My friend April, who might be a psychopath – Ann thinks yes, I think no – said you got expelled because you killed your teacher?”

“I’m with Ann, then,” Ben frowned. “Definitely didn’t commit murder. I’m pretty sure I would have gone to jail.”

“Oh,” Leslie says, suddenly finding Ben, inexplicably, slightly less interesting. Wait, she hadn’t _believed_ April, had she? Whoops. “What did you get expelled for, then?”

“Didn’t even get expelled,” Ben tells her, frowning. “Wow, you guys really…”

“Really what?”

“Never mind. Look, my mom took me from Partridge after a sort of…incident. And also because she’d just gotten divorced and my Dad hadn’t been all that keen on keeping still long enough for me to get settled in at school.”

“Is he a pilot?”

“What? No.”

“Oh. A truckie?”

“No?”

“What then?”

“He’s an accountant suffering through a mid-life crisis,” Ben told her frankly. “Anyway, in Freshman year I ran for School Captain and won, on a ticket that I would introduce Frozen Yoghurt to every classroom in the school.”

“And you didn’t get elected and the shame of it drove you into exile until you and your mom finally ended up at Pawnee,” Leslie nods.

“Oh, no, I won,” Ben looks at her intently. “Leslie, I’m from Partridge High. Are you sure you don’t remember—”

“Hang on,” Leslie’s eyes widened. “Oh my _God_. I remember that! You spent the whole allowance on the machines—”

“So there was no left over for maintenance and upkeep and none at all for replacing the yoghurt once it had run out,” Ben tells her. “So when we left for the first weekend after my election, and the power got turned off, all the remaining yoghurt went bad and the school had to pay to get them all removed. The board moved to remove me.”

“Oh my God, you were so cute,” Leslie smiles. “I remember. You were on the news.”

“Yeah, it kind of ruined me there,” Ben tells her. “I wasn’t trusted with a single thing for the next three years of my life. I couldn’t make it to any of the AP classes, and for school camps I genuinely had to get signed permission from the Local council. And they took 2 weeks to give me their decision. _Two weeks_.”

“Oh,” Leslie winces. “Yikes.”

“Yeah, yikes,” Ben shakes his head. “Look, I think…I think we can help each other. If I help you win, then I will have proven to everybody that I can be trusted, that I’ve _grown up_ , before my reputation catches up with me. And if I help you, you’ll win.”

Leslie watches him, and then smiles, _grins_ , and reaches for another cookie. “Damn Wyatt, you got yourself a deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here are some things I've referenced:
> 
> Aphra Behn was the first woman in England to get paid for her writing under her own name. Most famously, she wrote Oroonoko about an African king enslaved by the British (which soooome people say is anti slavery but most people agree is just anti-Puritan propaganda). 
> 
> (Cleo's myth): Cleopatra's facial reconstruction has actually sort of led historians to believe that she wasn't traditionally beautiful at all, and instead enamored her roman lovers with her quick wit and intelligence (especially in maths). 
> 
> The 1995 Beijing Women's Conference was a conference that is traditionally held every ten years (in different cities) to evaluate how the position of women had improved/changed on a global scale. 
> 
> LBJ was a notoriously strict Senate Majority Leader.
> 
> And a fun fact that I wanna share is : some historians credit the witch craze to the increased level of female economic independence after the bubonic plague from inheritance and a desperate need for a work force. Can't catch a break!


	2. Part II: But, Homework?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leslie attempts to stave off unwelcome feelings, Ben works at making Leslie's campaign a success, Joan Callamezzo makes her debut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a filler chapter I'm sorry about all the exposition but sometimes these things can't be helped!

When Ben sits with them the next day at lunch, no one says a word for the first five minutes. Ron nods at him as he sits down, and Ben nods back, and then Donna, who was doing some light reading (she had Ok! Magazine open in front of her and was lazily perusing Jennifer Anniston’s tragic love life) lifts her head up for a quick greeting. Even Tom is mostly normal, which Leslie is thankful for. He doesn’t harass Ben, or ask Leslie why Ben is there, or ask Ben what the hell he is doing. He spends the first five minutes of lunch arguing with April over whether eggs were kept in the fridge or in the pantry.

“You might as _well_ keep them in the fridge though,” Tom blusters, nearly actually mad. “I don’t get it!”

“Pantry,” April is banging her fist on the table. “Pantry, pantry, _pantry_!”

Only Ann had been warned of Ben’s presence (excepting a note in the group chat which said “there’s a special guest joining us at lunch”, which had been seen by all and not replied to.) and she had kept it civil. A quick smile, a quick hello, how are you, how are you settling in. It was the sort of bullshit small talk that Ann loved. Or was good at. Or maybe loved _and_ was good at. Leslie couldn’t remember.

Leslie looks over and meets Ben’s eyes, who smiles, a little nervous, but otherwise good.

“Oh my god, isn’t this the new kid?” Andy, loud, boisterous, puppy dog Andy, gapes his mouth and points at Ben.

April stands to be nearer to him and crosses her arms. “Duh.”

Andy shrugs off his confusion and smiles. “Hey, cool.” He shakes Ben’s hand. “Nice’ta meet you. I’m Andy. This is April.”

“He knows,” April says.

“Uh, nice to meet you as well,” Ben smiles back. He turns to look at Leslie again, whose heart does an annoying flip in her chest. She curses herself to stay calm. _Remember how annoying Justin was? Are you sure you need another boyfriend? Or even another crush? Or another boy? I wonder whether Ann, April and Donna would wanna strike with me on our own. Tom can come if he wants._

“Are you alright Leslie?” Andy asks. “You look like you’re choking, a bit.”

“No I don’t,” Leslie corrects him, trying to control her face. The worst bit is that Ben is watching her, half confusion, half concern. “I don’t! What the hell!” Now the whole table is looking at her. “God, would everyone mind their own business for a change?”

“Woman, I hear you,” Ron says through a bit bite of a turkey leg.

“Ok, Ron,” Leslie mutters, mumbling. “Look, never mind.”

“I never mind a thing,” Ron tells her.

“Ok good,” and then quieter. “ _You_ never mind a damn thing.”

“Yeah, I don’t.”

“Oh my God, shut up,” April glares at the two of them.

“Seconded,” Donna doesn’t even look up from her magazine. Leslie and Ron exchange furtive glances.

Tom and Andy are too distracted by a grotesque glass of water that they keep adding pepper and salt sachets to. When Ann sees them she frowns. “If you drink that, you’ll probably throw up.”

Andy looks up at her instantly. “Challenge, _accepted_.”

“Hey, nice!” Tom high fives Andy. “If this goes south it’s totally on you Ann.”

“Yeah it’s totally on you Ann,” Andy echoes half-heartedly.

Ann rolls her eyes.

Ben catches Leslie’s eye across the table. “Do we wanna…”

“Oh, yeah, good call,” she clears her throat and slams her health science text book on the table (maybe a little too hard, who’s to know). “Listen up bozos! Ben has something to say.”

“I thought you—”

“Balls been passed to you Ben keep it in play,” Leslie grits out of the side of her mouth.

“Well, Leslie has asked me, well, not really, we kind of figured it out together.” He clears his throat. “I mean it was a mutual decision.”

“Get to the point in the next three seconds or I walk,” Tom threatens.

“We don’t care if you walk,” Leslie challenges him.

“Ok, look, I’m in charge of Leslie’s campaign for School Captain.” Ben blurts it out.

“Bully,” Ron says.

“Wow, that’s excellent Leslie!” Jerry congratulates her.

“Ok, keep it in your pants Jerry,” Leslie spares him a side-eye. “Look, the point is that Ben’s gonna be hanging around a bit more now. And both he and I will be managing the day to day affairs.”

(Later, much later, Ben will say that he had expected all of Leslie’s friends to roll their eyes, to laugh it off. They weren’t the most serious bunch, and none of them had really seemed overly keen to get Leslie into office. He hadn’t expected to be so wrong.)

“Cool,” Tom says, and then remembering, he digs around in his bag, pulling out a stack of papers. “Last night I had a couple of hours between rewatching the sixth season of Mad Men and rewatching the first season of Rupauls Drag Race All Stars,” he hands the papers to Leslie, who rifles through them excitedly. “They’re some _swag_ designs. I didn’t know what your slogan was gonna be so I just presumed it was the most obvious one.”

“Which is?” Ben asks, looking from Tom to Leslie.

Leslie was half smiling as she read it off one of the papers. “ _Don’t be dope, vote for Knope_.” She frowns. “Isn’t it cool to be _dope_ these days?”

“It’s a very versatile word Leslie!”

“We were actually thinking of going with something a little simpler,” Ben says, and Tom glares at him, crossing his arms. “ _The Leader Pawnee Needs_.”

“What!” Tom throws his hands up in frustration. “Come on! It doesn’t even rhyme!”

“You haven’t ordered any of these have you?” Leslie looks over worried.

Ben half scoffs, “Surely—”

“Nothing that can’t be cancelled if I cry hard enough on the phone,” Tom sulks. “But come on! _Don’t be Dope, Vote for Knope_. Doesn’t it make you want to vote for yourself like a million times more?”

Ben blinks, corrected.

“No, Tom, but,” Leslie holds the papers to her chest and smiles brightly. “I _love_ them anyway. I’m gonna keep them and put them in my friendship binder. Would you sign them?”

“No!”

“Ok fine,” Leslie says, still smiling, and turning to stuff the papers in her bag.

Leslie watches in delight as each of her friends has something to offer. Ann says she’d been scrolling on Bobby Newport’s facebook page—

(Ah yes, Bobby Newport, Leslie’s one biggest obstacle to achieving her dream. His dad was head of the board and the single biggest contributor to the school, and his older brother had been a legend Quarterback and was now the secondary coach for the school’s team. His family oozed popularity and appeal. They were Leslie’s uphill battle. They were the one’s she had to beat.)

\--and had found some pretty incriminating stuff, like a meme shared in 2015 complaining about school life. Leslie loves Ann, but she moved the conversation on from there pretty quickly. Jerry had rustled up some free printing coupons, which Leslie had to admit were pretty useful, even if Jerry farted in Andy’s face when he bent over to hand them to her.

“I have a surefire way of getting the freshmen to vote for you,” April offered, smiling. “I might need some of your blood, though.”

There was a pause as each of them waited for her to explain her methods, but April seemed content to sit and sip at her diet coke.

Leslie glances around the circle and then back to April. “April, I love you, but I have to ask, it doesn’t involve anything,” her voice drops a couple of decibels, “ _illegal_ , does it?”

April just smiles again, and doesn’t answer.

Leslie watches her, worried, but is too distracted by Ben beginning to talk about how they’re going to earn the essential teacher’s vote to serve April any more warning looks.

The bell goes before Leslie can force any of the others to contribute, and the group disperses. She and Ron have gym, and they head off together.

“Do you wanna get some JJ’s tonight?” Leslie asks him as they manoeuvre around the tables towards the far end of the cafeteria. “I feel like I could do with some waffles. And a milkshake.” She sighs. “I’ve literally never ever in my entire life wanted waffles and a milkshake more than I do in this exact moment.”

“Sure thing,” Ron agrees. “I could go for some artery blocking bacon.” Leslie knows he’s not joking. It’s sometimes worrying being friends with someone who is so aware of the dangers of his lifestyle but will live it just because he _can_ , or because he _wants_ to. “What’s the occasion?”

“My campaign kicking off!” Leslie smiles, feeling the wave of delirious happiness swelling around her again. Captaincy is so nearly within her grasp. “And everyone’s on board! And Ben is cool even though the first time I met him I kind of yelled at him a bit.” Leslie turns to him and smiles. “Everything’s comin’ up _Leslie_.”

“That’s the best attitude you’ve ever had mere moments before gym class,” Ron tells her. “I’m impressed by you.”

“Thanks Ron, I impress myself as well,” Leslie nods. They’re nearly at the gym now, and Leslie is beginning to feel the anxious sweats she normally does this close to any sort of building that encourages children to climb up ropes against a timer. “Though I am seriously considering dropping out of school to get out of gym.”

“Ah,” Ron nods. “Right on schedule.”

She smiles at him and they split up at the changerooms. Leslie pulls her sports gear on quickly, lacing her runners and distracting herself from all the running she’s probably about to have to do by focusing on her campaign. She needs to organise a meeting with Principle Howser, needs to ask her mother to rally for her at the Parents and Friends meeting later this month, needs to write down a list of the most frequented spots on campus to set up her posters, needs to design the flyers to hand out, needs to find the money to pay for t-shirts and pens and other free stuff that’ll buy her vote from, well, let’s face it, who doesn’t love free stuff?

She’s still functioning on autopilot when she leaves the change rooms and files out to the gym, and is still obsessing over how she’s going to style her hair for the next month, three weeks and 3 days when she hears her name called.

“Leslie and Bobby, you guys are a pair—”

She blinks around and sees Bobby Newport smiling at her. Her mouth gapes open. He offers a little wave.

She catches Ron’s eye, whose face is unmoving, but they’ve known each other long enough that Leslie can see what he’s thinking.

 _Don’t throw away the ball, Knope_.

Damn. She’s gonna have to be cooler than she’s ever been in her entire life.

She stalks over, hand on her hip, cool as a cucumber.

“Hey Bobby,” she says, her voice a little lower, a little huskier than usual. “I wasn’t quite listening, what are we supposed to be doing again?”

“Are you getting a cold?”

“What?” She drops the husky Marilyn Monroe impression and clears her throat. “No. Uh, no. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, your voice sounded weird.”

Leslie grimaces at herself. _Aw man_. “Yeah, sorry. Must have had something stuck in my throat.”

“Apology accepted,” Bobby tells her, in a way she thinks he means to be graciously.

God, he’s such a baby. She’s running a campaign against a baby. A baby might beat her in a school election. The School Captain might have to have his diaper changed. Ok, too far Leslie, you’re losing the higher ground here.

 “So, anyway, back to the question I asked you, what exactly are we supposed to be doing right now?”

“Oh, I was hoping you’d forget you asked cos, ha, wouldn’t ya know it, but I have no idea either!” Bobby holds up his hand. “High five!”

“No…no.” Leslie frowns. “Ron!”

A quick word with Ron—

(who’d been paired up with Diane, a girl he’d met at woodworking who he had a massive crush on, and was a massive improvements on his last two girlfriends, both of whom were called Tammy, and both of whom were manipulative, undermining, controlling b-words. Leslie hates them, but god, something about that _word_.)

\--confirmed that they were measuring their partner against a series of basic exercises. Leslie measured Bobby’s push up count (15) and then he measured hers (5, and then another 20 on her knees, so really, she sorta smashed him out of the park).

“Hey, by the way,” Bobby says as he finishes writing down how many sit ups she’d managed (30! Woo! Personal Best!). “Would you like, maybe, stop?”

“Stop what? Smashing these bicep curls? Cos I haven’t even started!” Leslie picks the dumbbell up and pretends like she doesn’t immediately have to place it back down.

“Uh, no,” Bobby says, and Leslie, as subtly as she can, places the weight back onto the ground. “My dad told me you were running for school captain! And like, I guess that’s cool and stuff, but c’mon.” Damn, he actually looks close to tears. “C’mon. Can I just do it? Please? Like, please? I’ll get my brother to buy you alcohol or something.” He gasps. “Or _weed_. Maybe. I don’t know. Is that something you want?”

“Are you trying to _bribe_ me?” Leslie demands, feeling a surge of anger from her belly. “Do you…do you have any idea how insulting that is?”

“Nah, not _bribe_ ¸ more like…” Bobby screws up his face and then shrugs. “I don’t know. Like I guess I’m giving you something so that you’ll do something for me. I don’t know if there’s a more succinct way to say that—”

“Uh, yeah, there is,” Leslie frowns. “It’s called _bribery_ , and it’s definitely uncool, and I’m pretty sure illegal, although maybe not at this level, or maybe…look the point is, I’m not pulling out. And I want this. So.”

“Right,” Bobby clears his throat. Then his face darkens. “This is so _unfair_.” He looks up at her, puppy dog eyes and all. _Christ_. This guy could actually be the captain of the school. What would he do with his term? Nothing, probably. It’d be 90% him making typos in his address in the newsletter, and then 10% of just like…nothing. He was so dumb, that he probably wouldn’t even think of doing something bad at the calibre of Ben’s frozen yoghurt debacle. Leslie suddenly wishes Ben were with her. The urge is insistent, but fleeting, and when she turns back to Bobby, she’s entirely herself.

“This school is important to me, and the students and teachers and legacies of campus deserve someone who is always, always, looking to make this place better for everyone.” Leslie is firm. She feels calm radiating down her core. This is what she’s built for. “I don’t think you offer that to them, and I think I do. So I’m not going to give this to you, Bobby. Because I don’t want to vote for you, and I don’t think that everyone else should have to vote for you either.” She meets his eyes, steely. “Does that make sense?”

Bobby blinks at her after, and for a full moment stands comatose, hands in his gym short pockets.

“That was mean.”

“Yeah,” Leslie smiles to herself. “It was.”

Across the gym, Ron gives her a thumbs up. Leslie grins, and gives him two.

***

“Ok, you’re all here because you’re the most trusted of my advisors,” Leslie announces, standing at the end of the booth.

Ben, Ann and Ron all look at her, nodding, somewhat…mostly confused, Leslie figures.

JJs is bustling with Pawnee College students after the close of the school day. It annoys Leslie, how busy and loud they all make it, when any true JJ’s patron knows that the best recipe for a perfect breakfast spot is some nice quiet.

“Oh, wait, is this a strategy meeting?” Ben asks, looking at her, and then to Ann and Ron, who look at him with a sort of, _you have so much to learn about Leslie_ , look.

“Uh, yes, Ben,” Leslie scoffs. “Unless specified otherwise, these things are always strategy meetings.”

“Oh, I thought we were just hanging out,” he says, looking slightly stricken. “I might have invited someone to join us.”

“A girl?” Leslie demands. “Oh God, Ben. A _boy_? Wait, why is that worse? I don’t know. Hang on…” The three watch her as she circles her thoughts back into order into her head. “Ben! This is a serious meeting! Who did you invite!”

“Oh, my friend Chris Traeger.”

“Jerry did spill the beans on that friendship,” Ann remarks drily.

“Huh,” Leslie says. “Well, maybe the endorsement of legendary track runner Chris Traeger might be a boost…I really would prefer a heads up about these things though, Ben.”

“He’s just here to hang—”

“Oh, well, I’m sure I’ll be able to swing a quick bit of legalese in there.”

“Can we order?” Ron finally says something, and Leslie serves him a disparaging look. “What? I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since last period.”

“That was like,” Ann checks her watch. “Forty minutes ago.”

Ron clears his throat, and huffs in amusement. “Uh, yes, precisely.”

Leslie slides into the seat next to Ben, who shuffles up a bit to give her some room. Ann and Ron distract each other with Ann, daughter of a diet psychologist and the only friend Leslie has that actually enjoys Health Science classes, trying to convince Ron to just, _consider_ , his cholesterol.

“Hey, sorry if me inviting Chris wasn’t ok,” Ben turns to Leslie.

“Oh, please, it’s fine,” Leslie sighs. “I could do with a waffle and a non-captaincy chat, actually.” She smiles at him. “Oh my god, I have to tell you…today I was paired up with _Bobby Newport_ during gym class.”

“Good lord,” Ben smiles. It’s that cute smile again. Leslie curses. His lips look really soft. Focus! Lady! “That’s almost too contrived.”

“I know! Massively Soap Opera level,” Leslie laughs. “I do think it’s because our names are next to each other on the roll though. Knope…Newport.”

“Probably,” Ben smiles. “So what happened? Was there a dance off? Light sabre duel? Hand to hand combat?”

Leslie laughs. “My god you are such a nerd. Yes, Ben, Bobby and I got into a light sabre fight. Except with _words_.”

“Oooohhh, the best kind,” Ben rests his arm behind her on the seat. “What happened? Give me the blow for blow.”

“Well, it all started 200 years ago, when the Newports founded Pawnee College—”

“Ok, maybe bring it forward a bit,” Ben interrupts her. “Try by like 200 years.”

“Oh, fine. You’re no fun,” Leslie sighs and knocks Ben’s arm a bit, but he doesn’t move it, and she barely shirks away. “Ok, so, Bobby was asking me to drop running in the race. Just like, asked me. To my face.”

“What the hell?” Ben is incredulous.

“I mean it’s not that shocking, considering the fact that he’s, and I don’t say this lightly, a massive butthead who’s barely clever enough to tie his own shoelaces.”

“Maybe you should buy him some Velcro sneakers as a consolation prize when you win,” Ben suggests.

“That’s mean,” Leslie giggles. “Oh! That’s another thing! He kept accusing me of being mean.”

“God,” Ben shakes his head. “Leslie, you are going to destroy him.”

“Oh, you must say that to all the candidates you help,” Leslie waves her hand.

“No, I’m serious,” Ben says. “You’re gonna like…mash him to little bits.” He smiles and plays with the menu on the table in front of him, pushing an edge between his forefinger and his thumb. “It’ll be a delight to see.”

Leslie swings her legs under the table a little excited.

“Hello!” The voice was almost too bright.

Ben pulls his arm down as he turns to greet the newcomer. “Chris! Good to see you man.”

“Ben, I have _literally_ , never been happier to see an old friend…in my _life_.”

“Cool,” Ben seems to take Chris’s intensity on board as a given, so Leslie decides to roll with it, and not become seriously concerned that Chris might be pepped on something. Like sugar. Or MDMA. “Uh, so this is Ann Perkins—”

“Hello Ann Perkins,” Chris turns to Ann and says her name slowly like he’s tasting it. “It is an _honour_ , and a _delight_ , to be here with the very lovely Ann Perkins.”

Ann blushes slightly and grins goofily.

_Oh Ann, you impressionable delightful sea otter._

“Yep, and this is—”

“Ron Swanson,” Ron says, nodding at him, and looking back to his menu.

Chris, for all his bluster, seems to take the hint, and serves him with a reasonably to the point, “Ron Swanson! Hello!”

“And then finally, this—”

“ _This_ must be the lovely Leslie Knope I’ve heard to much about,” Chris shakes Leslie’s hand, and Leslie notes that his grip is firm, and yet surprisingly comfortable. “Ben _literally_ did not stop talking about you and your campaign to me in Maths this morning.”

“Well that’s sweet,” Leslie smiles at Ben, who sighs and looks at Chris slightly exhausted. “Uh, yeah. That’s me. Leslie, I mean. Leslie Knope. My middle name’s Barbara.” She pauses. “You didn’t need to know that.”

“No! But I’m glad I do!”

“Here Chris, I’ll move over for you,” Ann says, and Chris scoots in beside her.

In the end, there was a lot less discussion on the campaign than Leslie wanted. She spoke to Ben a lot, and Ron a lot, and Ben and Ron spoke for a weirdly long amount of time on whether Leslie should be aiming for the 2036 election for president just so she could be the youngest. Chris and Ann seemed to hit it off well. Both were beautiful, and both seemed interested in health and yoga and health bars and daily nut intakes and stuff like that.

_Haha daily nut intake. A good little sexual innuendo. Vulgar, maybe. But good. Leslie, hi Leslie it’s Leslie, remember to write that one down in case you’re ever stuck in a room full of men and need to be one of the boys._

But the night goes on, and she goes through two servings of waffles before they decide to split up and head  out into the night. Chris tells them he’s going to run home and plugs headphones into his ears, sprinting down Grand Avenue. Ron farewells them and enters his beat up old sedan. Ann’s house is just up the hill, so she pulls her cardigan around her shoulders and hugs Leslie goodbye.

When it’s just Leslie and Ben left, she looks at him and sees that he’s already looking at her.

“Hey,” she smiles.

“Isn’t this the part where we say goodbye?” Ben smiles back.

“Oh, yeah, I guess we can if we want to,” Leslie says back, suddenly feeling brave, and foolish. Alarm bells sound in her head, _hey don’t you remember all the bonehead boys you’ve dated before! Remember how cute they were when you first met them! Huh! You big doofus!_ “The weather’s still warm, you know. Feels weird to call it a night.”

“Well, I’ll see you in History tomorrow,” Ben says.

Leslie suddenly can’t let the conversation end. Absolutely can’t. Every atom in her body warns her against it. “Hey, how did you know about the essay we had to write anyway?”

Ben looks confused, “Uh…well I had to have a meeting with the head of history before getting accepted into AP and he told me that it was due…” He frowns. “Why?”

“Yep,” Leslie’s nodding her head quickly, perhaps too quickly. She should probably dial that down. “Yep, just as I suspected, sir.”

“Sir?”

“What? Don’t you like it when people randomly give you respect for no reason in a sort of really just, out of the blue way?”

“I mean, sure, it’s fine,” Ben huffs a laugh. “Hey, want a lift home?”

A couple more minutes before goodbye, then.

She climbs into the passenger seat of Ben’s car and they take off towards her house, and the town passes the window in a dulled wash of dark colours. He tells her about his brother, Henry, who’s studying college in Australia, and his sister Stephanie who’s at Notre Dame on a lacrosse scholarship, who’s just as big of a nerd as he is, and who comes to visit him and his mother whenever she can. Leslie, for the first time ever, is happy just to listen and giggle and then, when the car pulls into the drive, she takes too long to say goodbye, and too long to open the car door, and too long to walk the steps to the front door. And when she makes it to her room, it takes her hours too long to fall asleep.

***

Ben and Leslie are locked in a fierce debate over the Great Man Historical theory, and whether it had mythologised the Founding Fathers, when Joan Callamezzo sticks a flyer in their face.

Leslie relieves her of it.

“Homecoming in a couple of months!”

“Couple of months?” Leslie frowns. “Isn’t that a bit late?”

“Wow, Leslie, I’d think that even _you_ could be a little more forgiving of something being a little bit late,” Joan shakes her head. “Look, we had to delay. It’s not a pretty story, but—”

“Oh, you don’t have to tell us,” Ben eyes Joan warily.

“The old gym teacher, ahem, revealed himself at a public beach over the summer after coming back from a sabbatical in Europe and he was always in charge of these things so now that he’s gone—”

“We get the picture, yes, thanks Joan,” Leslie grimaces. She had been wondering where he’d disappeared to. “Does make you wonder why he wanted to coach gym.”

“Gross,” Joan makes a face. “Leslie, no one was even thinking that.”

“I mean, I was,” Ben offers, but Joan ignores him.

“So can we expect you to skip out again this year, huh, Knope?” Joan eyes her with the challenge. The girl’s bronze hair is piled high on her head, and her eyes, now locked with Leslie’s, are adorned with gold and black eyeshadow and, if Leslie wasn’t mistaken, fake eyelashes.

“Of course Leslie’s going,” Ben answers for her, and before she can angrily tell Ben off for speaking for her, and for presuming Leslie would have any business at all with an institution that bullied girls into high heels and impossible beauty standards, he kept speaking. “Leslie appreciates and loves every aspect of this school. She wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Joan blinks at Ben’s defence, and all of a sudden, Leslie realises what he’s trying to say. “A School Captain should show school spirit,” Leslie says, and she senses Ben’s relief as he realises she’s understood his intentions. “It’s no secret I’m not the biggest fan of the dance, but Pawnee College is important, and special.” She looks over to Ben, who winks encouragingly at her. “Any opportunity to celebrate it should be taken with gusto.”

Joan moves on shortly after, and Ben and Leslie high five.

“Dream team!” Leslie announces, smiling ear to ear. “Dream _team_. We should go get waffles. Let’s go get coffee and waffles and grab Ann and maybe, no offence, ditch you, and talk about feelings, and—”

“Yes, yes,” Ben placates her. “This is good momentum. And it means that we have to start getting you seen in the public eye, supporting Pawnee at events and stuff like that. Is there a basketball team at this school? Or a—”

“Football team!” Leslie nearly yells, so when she speaks next she drops her voice nearer to a whisper. “Yes! I mean, anyone who likes the football already probably prefers Bobby to me because, well, he’s an athletic boy and I’m a short girl.” She hops on the balls of her feet. “Ben! What’s your plan! Damn! This is cool! This is…this is really…”

“Cool?” Ben tries for her.

Leslie nods enthusiastically. “Better, even. Awesome, maybe. Who knows? This could be super _awesome_.”

And then Ben’s laughing, and she’s laughing, and it’s the two of them, bent double, laughing until it peters out to giggles, and they’re looking at each other, and Leslie is looking at Ben again, a little too closely again, and the laughs die off to an awkward _cough_.

“So anyway,” Leslie says, choosing to smile. She spirals a million miles a minute trying to think of something to say. Her eyes spy a flyer, and she, metaphorically, sprints for it with all her might. “Are you into debating? Trials are in a couple of days.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, actually,” Ben says, a little confused at the subject change, but too awkward to confront it - and Leslie almost regrets asking, because imagining him, stormy faced and relentless at a debating podium is kind of making her feel faint. “When exactly?”

“Friday after school,” Leslie rattles off excitedly. “I don’t run the club, well, not exactly, Ron is technically the president of the club but I do all the work,” she laughs nervously, and then clears her throat. “We’re like the Mighty Ducks. Wait, no we’re not. I haven’t even seen that movie.” She frowns. “We’re like the kids from the Dead Poets Society, except some of us are girls and ethnic and instead of Robin Williams in a defining role as an inspiring teacher, we have Mr. Gunderson who’s in charge of the math department and kind of hates us.” She frowns. “I’m not really selling it, am I?”

“Well, I’m definitely still keen,” Ben assures her. Then he frowns. “Wait, you haven’t seen the Mighty Ducks?”

“No?” Leslie frowns. “It’s like…on my list.”

“How long is your list?” Ben demands.

“I don’t know,” Leslie shrugs. “Long?”

“What else is on it,” Ben is nearly intense. “Tell me.”

“ _I’ve-never-seen-Game-of-Thrones_ ,” Leslie admits all at once, the admission spilling out of her nearly unprompted. She’d been mm-ing and ahh-ing ever since she properly met Ben whenever he brought up something called a “Callesy” (Khaleesi, Ben would later correct her) or something about a man named Tyrion and how worried Ben was now that the tv show had deviated so far from the books (Leslie could understand that pain – a little thing called Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). It had gotten to crisis point, when Ben had asked her what she was most excited about in the next season and Leslie had gathered enough information by listening to him to lamely say, “I’m excited to see if women get the vote.”

To which Ben had said, after a moment of awkward silence. “I mean, sure.”

“Well I mean, that’s not a movie and you should really keep your tv show lists and movie lists separate,” he’s at his nerdiest, it’s almost blinding. “Uh, also, _what_!” Ben gapes his mouth open at her. “Ok, your campaign is officially on hold.” He glances at the time on his phone.  “We have t-minus three hours until school ends. At the end of the day, you’re coming to my house and we’re watching Game of Thrones.”

“But homework,” Leslie tries weakly.

“Homework can wait!” Ben shakes his head. “Leslie, you’d love it. Well, you might not. It’s like Harry Potter if Harry Potter had no magic and everyone was an adult and there was gratuitous nudity.”

“That sounds terrible,” Leslie wrinkles her nose.

“I’m not selling it well,” Ben sounds like he’s nearly panicking. “Hey, look, I’ll buy you some waffles from JJ’s? Waffles and Game of Thrones? Who could say no!”

“You know how to drive home a deal,” Leslie smiles and raises her hand, and he shakes it firmly. “A gentleman’s agreement!” She proclaims loftily.

“It’s a date,” Ben says to agree, and they let go of each other’s hands perhaps too quickly after that, because, like, yeah.

Maybe it is.


	3. PART III: More Like Malwae-Twerp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leslie learns a harsh lesson, Ben has pheromones, Jon Snow is King of the North; Pawnee College, coming to you from the set of Friday Night Lights!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit more narrative in its formula than the previous two just to kick the story into gear!  
> Also! Make note that this is mostly a romance BUT there will be more political intrigue in the following chapters as the race for School Captain REALLY heats up!

Game of Thrones is more Leslie’s style than she was expecting. Her eyes are locked on the tv so tightly, cursing stupid _Khal Drogo_ and _I don’t care if she thinks he loves her, she’s technically his slave_ and Ben is eyeing her with amusement. She can tell because whenever she looks out of the corner of her eye she can see him watching her, furtively, like he’s worried she might disappear if he loses track of her.

She shovels half a waffle into her mouth. “Oh m’ _Gooob_ ,” she tries, food stuck. Half-embarrassed, she swallows then tries again. “Khaleesi! You’re so much better than him!”

“You know this isn’t the super-bowl, right?” Ben asks her.

“Sorry I just get so hyped up sometimes and you gave me sugar also I’m a feminist and this is—”

Ben laughs and waves her down. “No, no, it’s fine.” He smiles. “It adds to it.”

“Really?” Leslie asks doubtfully.

“Well, no,” Ben admits. “But I’ve seen the first season like 70 times.”

Leslie doesn’t ask whether he’s exaggerating. She watches as he mouths along with Tyrion Lannister’s dialogue and laughs at jokes before they happen. Wow, ok. He might not be joking.

“Tell me honestly,” Ben says after she’s quietened, and has calmed down a bit. “Are you enjoying it?”

“Oh my god, _yes_ ,” Leslie looks over at him with wide eyes. “They’re telling human stories in a fantasy world! It covers so many genres effortlessly! And the cinematography and _oh my god_! The costumes? And the freakin’ _Dire Wolves_?”

Ben’s smile is goofy. “That’s what I always say.” He reaches for the bowl of popcorn in the middle of the table. “The thing about the human stories in a fantasy world thing.”

“Well,” Leslie says. “I guess good minds think alike then. I guess.”

They finish the episode in silence, and by the time the credits roll, Leslie knows she should probably head home.

“So I should probably—”

“—oh yeah, definitely—”

“It’s just, school tomorrow and—”

“I totally get it—”

“—really should make a start on my civics homework—”

“—got like seventeen pages to read for Health Science tomorrow—”

“Gross,” Leslie smiles.

“Oh my God, the _grossest_ ,” Ben rolls his eyes, and then jumps to his feet. “I’ll walk you out.”

“This was fun,” Leslie offers as they stroll through the house.

“Bye Leslie!” Julia calls out from somewhere in the house.

“Oh,” Leslie blinks. “Uh, bye Julia!”

“It _was_ fun,” Ben agrees. “We should…uh, we should do it again sometime.” He hastens to add, “after we’ve finished with the campaign. No more slacking off!” He laughs and it sounds forced. Leslie wonders if he’d appreciate if she’d let him go off to the bathroom to wash his face and slap some sense into himself.

“Definitely,” Leslie says. “And as much as I definitely love Game of the Thrones—”

“Game _of_ Thrones,” Ben corrects, scoffing like a goof.

“You’re a goof,” Leslie tells him.

“You are!”

“ _And_ as much as I definitely didn’t find it boring except at the bits when we were following weird boy—”

“Jon?”

“No, the other one—”

“Robb?”

“Hmm,” Leslie frowns. She snaps her fingers. “Little blonde man…little…Joseph? Maybe Harrison or something.”

“Joffrey?”

“I wasn’t too far off!”

“You said Harrison,” Ben smiles at her with a far away look in his eye. Leslie’s heart swells in her chest, and she feels something warm moving around in her tummy.

“I said Joseph as well,” Leslie reminds him.

“Well he isn’t in it that much,” Ben offers.

“No, well, that’s true,” Leslie acknowledges. “Even so, I think next time we should start working on my list. My movie list.” She sighs and shakes her head. “Every day that passes that I haven’t seen _Blade Runner_ hurts a little more.”

“You haven’t—” Ben splutters. “Ok, Leslie, this is serious.”

Leslie smiles. “I know! I know it’s terrible.” Still caught, she pauses. “You know, I really thought his name was Harrison.”

“I know,” Ben says, and that affectionate smile is back on his face, and when he moves in to hug her goodbye, she holds for a second too long, and squeezes an inch too tightly, and she can feel his arms wrapped around her, and smell his soap and deodorant through his jumper, and when they break apart she’s nearly woozy.

And Ben’s nearly blushing. “See ya, Leslie.”

“See you tomorrow, you crazy kid.”

It’s a blustery late evening that Leslie walks through to get home, and her hair is a mess by the time she makes it back to her house. Her mother just hands her a hairbrush, with a smile, without saying a word, and Leslie dreamily pulls herself, and a plate of cookies and a glass of milk, up to her room. She get’s through algebra, and history, and reads three chapters of the book they’re studying for Literature ( _The Red Badge of Courage_ ). She puts Tom’s designs in his folder, next to a napkin where he’d drawn up the figures for a sporting complex that had both an ice-skating rink and a roller-skating rink. She managed a chapter of an Amelia Earhart biography, and half an hour worth of podcasts on how to achieve your goals in politics without sacrificing your morals.

And then she lay in bed, just as her clock begins to warn her that she only has 4 hours before she has to be awake, and ready for school, and she closes her eyes, and imagines that she’s watching Game of Thrones again, and that this time, she and Ben are on the same couch, and that this time, his arm was behind her head like it had been at JJ’s that night, and that this time, she didn’t have things she wanted, and a life she needed, and that she was brave enough to speak up, look up to him, and hold his hand.

***

The days started to fall rapidly as the week neared the end. By Thursday, Leslie finally had designs for her posters that she was happy with, and by Friday she and her friends are plastering them all over the school. Ann and Chris spent most of their time giggling and painting glue on each other, and Tom spent his entire allotted time tweeting @ Bill Gates to see if he could get some venture capital for a start up idea he had. Ron grumbled about having to use a glue he wasn’t used to, and Donna’s face darkened when a brief struggle with a notice board and one of Leslie’s posters resulted in a broken nail. April and Andy, Leslie is nearly surprised, are the ones who accomplish the most with the least hassle. Their section of the school is covered first, and while Leslie notes, with some discomfort, that April has pushed Leslie’s posters over the sign ups for pretty much all the sporting teams, she has to admit she’s impressed.

Ben smashes his debating trial, and is put into first stream with her, Ron and Donna. Ben asks—

(Very quietly)

\--how Donna managed to make first stream when the girl seemed to talk only when absolutely necessary.

“That’s only to you,” Leslie assures him. And when he looks nearly offended, she backtracks. “No, she just doesn’t speak to you because she doesn’t like you.” He seems even more pained. “Yet! She doesn’t know you. Ok, sorry. I really have to learn to phrase things properly.” She tries again. “Donna takes a while to warm up to people, but when she does, you hear her all the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like…” Leslie struggles to find the words. “She has this special power, where she’ll only let you grasp at her magnificence if she lets you.”

“ _Let’s_ you?”

“Yes, that is what I said,” Leslie frowns. “Anyway, you’ll see.” She smiles, brightens. “You’ll see.”

The weekend comes, and Leslie’s half afraid she’s not going to see Ben, but then the campaign sees all her friends come around to her house – even Chris, who was never explicitly invited but, hey, he’s welcome – and they set up in the basement with signs and a battered old laptop that Andy took from the library, as well as a whiteboard and a minifridge where Leslie’s mom let’s her keep milk shake syrup and milk.

“What about the ice-cream?” Ben had asked her, when he saw it for the first time.

“Mom got the idea from Swiss gun laws,” Leslie explains, looking at the fridge mournfully. “People can buy and sell guns as much as they want but where the government _gets ya_ ,” she slams her fist into her palm, feeling like a powerful orator. “Is that they are hyper vigilant about who buys bullets.”

“Does it work?”

“Not really,” Leslie shrugs. “I’m pretty sneaky, and I know where the ice-cream is kept.” She tilts her head. “Though, I’m pretty sure it works in Switzerland.” She narrows her eyes. “Which one were you asking about?”

“Uh, either? I guess.”

Saturday turns into early Sunday, and bleary eyed her friends all collapse onto the floor, heads spinning with demographic figures for the next school year, as well as the three hours Tom had forced them to play a stupid new game show he had invented, where he’d say a word backwards and the first group to figure out what the word actually is in its normal order wins.

Leslie had been on Ron’s team, and they had won because he kept figuring it out and muttering it under his breath, and then Leslie would repeat it loud enough for everyone to hear.

Still, winning aside, it’s really stupid. Although, his plans for harassing a bunch of cable access channels until one of them relents might just work.

When Leslie wakes up the next morning she carefully removes herself, trying not to displace too much are on the double blow up mattress she and Ann—

(They had been whispering about how big and scary their lives would be after graduation, Leslie didn’t worry about Ann. Her best friend is too clever, and too tenacious, and too kind, to end up anywhere but somewhere completely excellent. Leslie, on the other hand, sees her life spread out like the fig tree in _the Bell Jar_. Except she’s hungry for apples, and the apple orchid is 700 miles up a cold, steep hill.)

\--had shared he night before. She checks the clock on the wall (7:21) and checks in on her mother (a note on the breakfast bar tells her that Marlene is spending her Sunday morning walking around the neighbourhood at a semi-fast pace with a group of other middle aged women) and then checks to make sure that there’s enough coffee to go around when she sets the coffee maker on.

Ben’s voice is low with sleep, and startles her when he says, “hey.”

“Oh!” her voice is too high. “Hello! Did you sleep well—I’m making coffee,” Leslie doesn’t let him speak. “You don’t have to have any. Actually it was a stupid idea. I’m gonna throw it out—”

“Well, don’t do that,” Ben stops her. “I woke up at like 5 and, sorta _smashed_ a couple of levels on Pokemon Go—”

“Do people still play that?”

“I caught a _Charmander_ ,” Ben’s excitement is enough to make her smile, and then his silly fist pump dance that he does after is enough to make her grin.

“Wanna help me with this coffee?”

“I definitely want to stop you emptying the sugar bowl into it,” Ben comes over to her.

She sighs. “You already know me too well, Wyatt.”

“Chris went for a run, by the way,” Ben adds in, taking the filter paper that Leslie offers him and sticking it in the top of the machine. “Said he’d be back in 15 minutes.”

“When was that?” Leslie widens her eyes. She spoons the coffee into the top of the coffee maker and checks the water level.

“Like 5 minutes ago maybe,” Ben shrugs. “Do you need any help with—"

“Nah I’m fine,” Leslie brushes him off, straightening up and hitting the _brew_ button. “So we got, like, 10 minutes before he’s back,” Leslie figures.

“Quick maths,” Ben congratulates her drily.

She smirks. “Uh, yeah. You don’t even know my level to get on it.” She pauses, and then, a concocted plan properly formulated in her brain, she turns to Ben with a wide smile. “Hey, wanna help me make pancakes?”

She gets the flour, and the milk, and he grabs the eggs and the sugar, and the mix is in and ready to go in nearly no time. She pours them both coffees, and he tells her it’s the best caramel vanilla hazelnut black brew he’s ever had. Leslie knows it’s a fake compliment, but she’s not foolish enough to scorn good mojo when it comes her way. He laughs when she spills flour all over her pyjama shirt, and she cackles at him when he cracks the egg awkwardly and the white spills out over onto his hand. She likes how he tuts to himself, and how he washes the egg off (irreverently, but shooting a conspiratorial glance to Leslie, like the egg had been gunning for them both), and she likes how he ladles the mixture onto the pan; scooping it up, scraping the excess off the bottom of the soup ladle, and then pouring it carefully onto the hot plate. Leslie lets him have a few goes, but she knows that when it comes to pancakes, sometimes you really need the master.

“And you’re the master?”

“Don’t sound so shocked, Benji,” Leslie warns him, ladling out in little circles over the pan. “There’s a reason they call me the current reigning monarch of breakfast foods.”

“What are you—”

“Just watch,” Leslie interrupts him, holding a hand up in front of his face. “You don’t question it.”

The smell of the cooking food and roasted coffee rouses the rest of her guests. Tom arrives first, eye mask pushed to the onto of his head like sunglasses. He sits at the breakfast bar and complains to Ben about how loudly Jerry had been snoring, and then when Jerry pokes his head around the corner, yells directly at him.

“I need my eight, Jerry!” Tom is yelling, while Leslie flips the pancake, and shows Ben that the weird little circles had been patterning a bowtie on the pancake. Ben’s eyes widen, and he gapes at her, excited. Tom gestures to his facial area; “How do you think _this_ happens?”

“Aw, geez, I’m sorry Tom,” Jerry palms the back of his neck. “Look, I can’t—”

“No, Jerry, I don’t wanna hear it,” Tom shakes his head solemnly. He turns back to Leslie. “Hey boss, can I have some _spriiiinkles_?”

“Here ya go buddy,” Leslie gives him the bowtie pancake and he cheers and thanks her, but still gets a little annoyed that she only has pink and purple sprinkles to put on the pancake.

“You _know_ the green ones are my favourite. They’re the yummiest.”

“Well, I’m not sorry,” Leslie tells him. “You know that they’re just like, tiny balls of sugar, right? It’s just dye.”

Tom shakes his head. “Maybe to you.”

Next up is Ann, who gets a pancake in the shape of a heart, and then Donna, who gets a dollar sign patterned into hers. Then Ron, who fires up his own pan and places a heart-stopping amount of bacon onto the oil. Chris comes back during the commotion, and thanks her, but refuses, opting instead for a quinoa, acai and aloe berry snack bar he’d brought along for sustenance.

He and Ann sit beside each other and keep bumping elbows. Leslie eyes them.

When she tries with Ben, she hits him a little too hard and ends up apologising and apologising while he shrugs off a wince and brushes her off.

Ugh. God. Flirting is so _hard_.

Pretty soon the rest of the party has maple syrup-y pancakes as well. Andy had stomped up the stairs, voice booming, demanding some “superstance” (sustenance? Maybe?) with April following in close behind him. His laughter booms out through the room as they finish their breakfasts. Ben and Leslie fire up another batch once the first ones eaten, and by the time everyone is finally satisfied, the morning is pretty much officially the afternoon.

“I’ll help you clean up,” Ben offers.

“Me too!” Ann calls.

Pretty soon the troops fall into line behind the altruistic trend setters, and even Tom, who had had a foot, literally, out the door, was pulled back in (by Donna, who seems to be the only person he truly respects).

 The house is in working order by the time Leslie walks her friends to the door. Each leave, blinking into the sunlight and hugging her goodbye. And if she hugs Ben a little tighter, a little longer, and breathes in the smell of him (syrup from where he spilt it on himself, the deodorant Tom had leant him, the soap in his clothes), she ascribes it all to the late night, and riding the breakfast food high.

***

“The game is tonight, right?” Ben asks her as she slides in next to him at history.

“Hello to you as well,” she tilts her head. “And no. Well yes. I don’t…I mean I don’t know. Who knows? In fact I think it got cancelled. Rained out.”

“Leslie,” Ben’s voice is gentle. It sort of makes her shiver. Whoops. “It’ll be fine. It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal? _Not a big deal_?” Her voice is taking on hints (mere hints, ok), of hysterics. “Uh, cold, loud, no food, mean boys. That’s football. Boring. Football being _inanely_ boring is another thing about football I forgot to add. Also, my ex-boyfriend plays. Well no he doesn’t. He actually doesn’t and never did. But it _is_ cold!” She nods, certain. “And no food.”

“I’ll bring a packet of chips,” Ben assures her. “Will I pick you up at, say, 5?”

And maybe the football isn’t that bad, because she sort of hears herself saying yes.

The class is on the attitude towards women in ancient Rome, and Leslie is firing on all cylinders. She backhands every insinuation that women had it better because they weren’t dying on the battlefield, or because they didn’t have to worry about politics, or because during the late Empire, the wives of the emperor were able to manipulate their husbands to action.

At about the halfway point of the class, Ben leans over and whispers, “I think you’re more qualified than him to teach this, to be honest,” and it is, hand to god, the most awesome, cutest, hottest thing Leslie has ever heard in her entire life. No exceptions.

***

“I don’t even get why you dislike this so much,” Ann has to half yell over the cries of the swollen crowd. She’s wearing the school scarf, yay!

“It’s just so…”

“I mean, I know you’ve gone to see professional games,” Ann tells her. “Don’t even try to lie. I know for a fact that you and your mom go.”

“I just…” Leslie sighs, and then swallows. “Look, the players aren’t very good, everyone is yelling nonsense nonstop, and there’s the teen boy brigade—” Leslie gestures to where a large group of barely-there moustaches are screaming and, quite literally, banging their chests, “—whom I _hate_.”

“Huh, well, fair enough,” Ann shrugs, and then, watching the game, frowns, cheeks puffing. “ATTACK THE _BALL_!”

“Oh boy,” Leslie murmurs, watching Ann.

“Hey,” Ben pops out from behind her, holding the camera he’d gone to collect from his car (they’d made it all the way and he had had to run back. Leslie would have gone with him, but, you know. Who can be bothered?). “Alright, so these are going on—”

“My facebook if they win, and Instagram if they lose,” Leslie finishes for him. “Don’t worry, I’m all over it.”

“And you—”

“Friend requested everyone from school who I recognised _and_ made my Instagram account public,” Leslie assures him. Then she frowns. “Which I kind of regret. Do you think Instagram knows that some accounts just go around following people? Kind of freaks me out. I kinda wanna do something.”

“One step at a time,” Ben reminds her. “Fix social media forever in a couple of weeks, if you want.”

“Done,” Leslie nods.

Ann lets out another burst of yelling, and Leslie and Ben make use of the break to get set up. Leslie pushes back her hair nervously. Ben had told her to come as she was, but she hadn’t been able to resist styling her hair just a little, and putting on some mascara, and wearing her favourite headband (it had been candy red, and Ann had firmly told her to take it off and leave it in Ben’s car).

“I wish I had that hairband,” Leslie says, grumbling, dramatically sticking a curl behind her ear.

(And Leslie is still kind of sore about it.)

Ben takes the photos quickly. Then Ann, sparing a moment to look through the ones he’d taken, smiles to herself, handing them back to Leslie.

They’re nice, the first two are Leslie looking out to the game, and then another one with both her and Ann smiling at the camera out of the corner of their eye. And then a fourth, with Leslie looking at something just about the lens, with a wistful, calm, fond look in her eye.

Leslie avoids Ann’s eye, and definitely doesn’t blush.

“These are really good,” Leslie thanks Ben quickly, passing the camera back, pushing it into his arms.

“Thanks,” Ben smiles, proud of himself. “I’ll email them to you tonight.”

“Tech wiz!” Leslie says, for some reason, and then bites her lip to shut herself up. It doesn’t last too long. “Anyway, what do we do now?”

“Uh,” Ben frowns and gestures out to the game. “Stay and watch? Presumably.”

“Huh,” Leslie scrunches her face, uncomfortable. There’s a pause, “I mean, do we _have_ to—”

“Oh my god.”

Leslie sighs and sits back onto the bleacher, feet out in front of her dejectedly.

She passes most of the night watching Ann and Ben talk about college football teams, and then a little bit on the ethics of giving scholarships to kids for athletic ability and whether it was balanced well enough against kids who couldn’t afford college, which Leslie contributed to and might have also started halfway through a discussion about something or other that she didn’t care that much for.

Finally, _finally_ , the Friday night ends with a roar of excitement from the crowd (Pawnee College wins, apparently. Woo! Facebook post it is, then. Far more celebratory than an Instagram post, apparently). Ann and Ben discuss the highlights of the game, and Leslie drags her feet behind them as the three struggle through the crowd to get to the car.

“I think McLauren carried the game,” Ben is saying. Leslie knows McLauren, a senior who she’d gone to Elementary school with who’d stolen her coloured pencils. She didn’t care for him. Leslie sniffs. “If it wasn’t for him, they’d have gotten caught up right at the start—”

“Oh, _totally_ ,” Ann is red-cheeked with exertion and excitement. “Definitely, absolutely.”

“I can’t tell, are you agreeing with me, or…?”

“Shut up, loser,” Ann rolls her eyes. Leslie huffs and kicks at a stray piece of gravel. It bounces along the road, miserable, rolling to a stop next to Ben’s left sneaker. He dislodges it a little as he walks by, and for some reason, it irritates her a little bit.

“Leslie!”

Leslie blinks and turns at her name. Ben and Ann pause as well, turning back to look at Leslie. Across the crowd, Leslie spies a semi-friendly face.

“Shauna,” Leslie says, in a light, weird way. The girl waves and begins pushing through to come speak to her. Her pretty face and bright smile seem to glow under the fluorescents they set out for the carpark. God _damn_ it. Only Shauna Malwae-Tweep could look like a model in this lighting. Ugh. She clears her throat. “ _Shauna_.” Nope, too low. Luckily, once Shauna’s within hearing distance, Leslie has a control over herself and says; “Hey, Shauna.” In her best attempt at a normal voice.

“It’s so good to _see you_ ,” Shauna pulls Leslie into a hug. “Oh my goodness! I feel like we haven’t properly caught up since school started.”

“Hm,” was all Leslie could manage.

Sensing her floundering, Ben and Ann dashed forward. Ann could be just as awkward as Leslie, when she wanted to be, but manages a quick _hello_ and a peck on the cheek without too many world ending catastrophes. Ben’s a step above, Ben goes beyond anything. He probably goes beyond decorum, in a way. Probably in a way that a lot of decent folk would find pretty scandalous.

He places a hand on her arm. “Hey, nice to meet you. I’m Ben.”

“Oh, the new kid,” Shauna’s voice is probably a bit too _sexy_ , if anyone was to ask Leslie her opinion on it.  It’s abrasive. Who wants that? “Nice to meet you! I’ve been hearing a lot of stuff around campus.”

“Congratulations on not being _deaf_ ,” Leslie mutters to herself. She thinks Shauna hears her, because she sends her an odd look, but she seems to brush it off relatively well.

“Yeah, well, I’m enjoying it. I’m actually helping Leslie here,” Ben gestures out to her, and Leslie clears her throat and flips her hair back behind her shoulder like all the girls on the OC do. Ann frowns at her, confused. She adjusts her posture awkwardly, trying to remember how she normally stands when she isn’t claiming crush territory against the good looking future New Yorker editor. God, hands in her pockets? On her waist? “She’s running for School Captain.”

“Oh _yes_ ,” Shauna’s eyes widen. To her credit, her fake enthusiasm sounds incredibly real. “You’ll have to do an interview for the paper.”

Leslie tries her best not to get too excited. “Can you start recording now because I have some _excellent_ article name ideas: _Lest We Knope: Leslie Knope Ain’t Here to Mope, a Character—_ ”

“Normally the teachers decide,” Shauna interrupts her. “But it’s nice!”

It’s an absolute crackerjack, and it had taken her and Tom half an hour to figure out the Saturday the whole gang had camped over. “It’s pretty excellent, so, do what you can.”

“You as well Ben,” Shauna turns to Ben, beaming, and then _she_ touches _his_ arm, and oh God, that’s game over. The end of days have arrived. Leslie feels anger brewing in her belly. “New Students always have an air of intrigue around them. We should get together so we can get a chance to figure you out. Hobbies—”

“Too nerdy for publication, unfortunately.”

Shauna laughs. “Alright then, we might stick with personal life. Girlfriend?”

 _Um_.

Ann; beautiful, conscious, queen of crises. She must realise that Leslie is about to challenge Shauna to some sort of duel (singing, dancing and sword play are all on the table), because she hastily steps forward before Ben can answer.

(Leslie swears, after, that she imagines Ben looking at her, nearly frightened, nearly apologetic, nearly raw. She swears he tilts his head, swears his eyes meet her with an odd purpose. Swears she can feel his heart beating, for just two beats, in time with hers through the soles of her feet. But then he looks away, or had never looked at all, and the feeling trickles off to nothing.)

“Well, lovely to meet you—uh, see you again, Shauna,” Ann says, a bit too loudly, hands up in a defensive position. “We should really be—”

“Oh, also, I nearly forgot,” Shauna brightens. She looks apologetically to Ann. “Sorry to interrupt, but the thought just occurred to me.”

“But we should really be going so whatever it is or like whatever things, say a date or something, you might be about to propose can probably wait for another time,” Leslie blurts out. “Or maybe never. Up to you. Preferably never.” Leslie clears her throat.

“Oh, well…” Shauna hesitates, but then she reels back her sunny demeanour. “Um, anyway, I’m having a party at mine after the football in two weeks’ time.” She grins. Oh god, she is cute. She and Ben would be so cute together. They’d make the cutest little babies and spend a lot of time going on cute dates and reading books after the other has finished so they can talk to each other about them and – _oh god_ – Shauna probably makes better _pancakes_ than Leslie—

That thought jars Leslie back into reality. Ok, there are some girls in the world who are taller and prettier and smarter and funnier, Leslie can give hypothetical mystic woman that. But she won’t give up her stellar skills in the early morning kitchen. Nuh-uh.

“Sounds fun,” Ann says tightly.

“Oh, yeah,” Ben nods. “I’ll definitely be there.”

“Awe _some_ ,” Shauna beams. “Leslie? Can I count on you?”

“Sure,” Leslie barely mutters.

“Awesome! Now it’s a real party,” Shauna claps in excitement. “Alright, I’ll let you guys go. Call me about the article Leslie! It’ll be a real blast. See you guys! And it was lovely to meet you Ben.”

“I cannot believe how unkind she is,” Leslie mutters to Ben and Ann once Shauna had disappeared back through the crowd. “Disrespectful as well. And, like, maybe a bit _racist_ —”

“Leslie,” Ann sighs. “Just…”

“Ok, fine,” Leslie quietens, and the three of them make it to the car in peace.

For the drive home, Ben responds when spoken to, but doesn’t make any accounting puns, or tell Leslie that her skirt makes her look like a Scottish girl, because it’s tartan, or tell Leslie that he’d tried to make pancakes that morning, and that they hadn’t ended up as well as the ones from the weekend, or talk to Leslie about how the photos from the night would be in her inbox as soon as he got home. Maybe Shauna broke him. Or maybe, more realistically, Leslie broke him. Ben farewells them out the front of Leslie’s house with a smile and a wave. Leslie nearly goes up to him and tells her that she’s sorry, that she wasn’t thinking, that something hateful and massive and dark had been squeezing her insides so tightly that they had hurt. But she doesn’t. Instead she reminds him about the photos and nods professionally. When he drives away, she feels her heart deflate, just a little, in her chest.

Ann camps at Leslie’s that night, pulling out the spare mattress in Leslie’s room and squeezing it in between the crammed crap. The light goes off, and from the silence and the darkness, Ann speaks up.

“You should tell him, Les. Boys are dumb.”

“No,” Leslie says. “I’m pretty sure he’s dating Shauna now, anyway, so.”

Ann scoffs. “Ok, I can see you’re gonna need some morning-time clarity for this conversation. Goodnight, crazy.”

“Goodnight, Ann.”


End file.
